


A Bright Future

by dptullos



Series: The Prole Office [3]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Lex Talionis, Original Characters - Freeform, Time Period: Vorkosigan Regency, dig two graves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:41:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29985798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dptullos/pseuds/dptullos
Series: The Prole Office [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974169
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

No one looked at servants. 

These were proper, modern Vor, so they pretended. Their parents and grandparents would have treated Hanna as if she was invisible, taking a drink from the tray without a word of thanks or acknowledgement. The new Vor made the right noises when she came by, expressing gratitude as automatically as they breathed, but they didn’t really see her. 

Only other servants noticed Hanna, and they were too busy to care. The lobby of the Prince Xav Hotel was packed with guests, gossiping and arguing and drinking. Especially drinking. A small Betan woman in a sarong was taking shots of maple mead with an enormous Service commander in formal red-and-blues, somehow staying upright even though he had to be twice her weight.

Hanna was dressed in a simple black skirt and white blouse, an outfit that almost matched the hotel uniform. The guests could assume that she worked for the Prince Xav, while the hotel staff would assume that she worked for a guest. She moved briskly, a woman on a mission, and no one looked at her twice. Not even the man standing quietly in the corner.

She had spotted him the moment she walked in the door, and she suspected that he wanted to be noticed. A useful reminder that the Eyes of the Emperor were always upon his subjects. The undercover agents would be hidden among the crowd, waiting and watching, alert for any sign of treason. Long practice kept a polite, meaningless smile on her face, the fixed expression of a professional servant. 

Her smile didn’t waver when a drunken major staggered by, nearly spilling a glass of red wine over her blouse. She simply stepped to the side, allowing him to sprawl gracelessly across the floor. A hotel servant ran over to check his pulse, but the steady babble of conversation continued. It wouldn’t be a proper Barrayaran party until at least half of the guests were falling down drunk. 

The man in the corner was most of the way there. He was older than most of the crowd, with thinning white hair and pale blue eyes. As she watched, he took a deep drink directly from a bottle in his hand, staggered, and braced himself against the table at his side. 

Careful not to hurry, Hanna made her way towards General Tobias Vorkramer. His face was flushed and red, and for a moment Hanna was afraid that he would simply fall over. She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally straightened up. He was an old Vor, a man from Emperor Ezar’s generation, and so he did not even pretend to look at her when she placed a glass of water on the table.

She drew out a small box. The most conservative Vor could appreciate Betan anti-intoxicants, the delightful drugs that let them spend twice as long drinking themselves into unconsciousness. Every proper hotel had a supply for parties like this. Hanna selected her pill carefully, held it up to the light to confirm the color, and turned back to the glass of water.

The first notes of the Imperial Anthem sounded through the room, and the enormous vidscreen hanging on the wall came to life. Hanna automatically closed her fist around the pill and gave her full attention to the display. Around her, the babble of conversation died away, and rulers and servants turned to face the man upon the screen. 

“People of Barrayar.” Lord Regent Vorkosigan was dressed in full military uniform, the formal red-and-blues with the rank tabs of an admiral. “Today we celebrate the birthday of our Emperor. Let us remember our duty to the Emperor, the sacred oaths of fealty that unite our Imperium…”

She listened with half an ear. Hanna had taken sacred oaths long ago, when she was only a child, and she intended to keep them. The speech went on and on, praising the young Emperor, the loyalty of Barrayar’s soldiers, the honor of the Vor, and the hard work and obedience of the proles. Hanna thought it was remarkably similar to last year’s speech. 

The Lord Regent discussed the Cetagandan Threat and Our Brave Soldiers and The Duty of the Vor. He claimed that Emperor Gregor was a truly great and wise Emperor, though it was the Lord Regent who ruled the Imperium and Vorkosigan would have said the same things if Gregor Vorbarra was completely insane. Hanna clapped at the right times, and if ImpSec’s watchers detected a lack of enthusiasm, it had been a long night. She was tired. One of the hotel servants, an old man with a truly enormous mustache, yawned and then immediately broke into applause, as if he was making up for his lack of patriotism. 

“...and let us march forward, united as our Emperor’s people, into a bright future!” The national anthem began to play, and Hanna sang along for all twelve stanzas, or at least the eight that she remembered. The Lord Regent’s image faded from the screen, replaced by Emperor Gregor’s, and Hanna cheered at the top of her lungs for a child she had never met. The noise around her was deafening, and now that the speech had ended, people had begun to move again, going to the bar for fresh drinks to toast their Emperor. 

General Vorkramer hadn’t moved. He was standing still with one hand over his heart, staring at Gregor Vorbarra. Hanna dropped the pill in the glass, waited for it to dissolve, and stood by patiently. When the old man finally turned away from the display, she offered it to him. He drank half the glass with one swallow, and Hanna faded away, off to help another guest. 

The seconds seemed to creep by, but she made herself wait four minutes. She fetched a drink of whiskey from the bar, collected a hundred-mark tip from a man wearing a formal suit and a happy, drunken smile, brought a tray of snacks to a side table, and slowly made her way back towards General Vorkramer. The glass was still sitting on his table, but it was empty now. The General was drinking from a bottle, looking at something very far away. He did not seem to notice her when she brushed by the table and picked up the glass. 

There was a line at the exit, a crowd of people struggling to get through the doors. Some of the guests were already walking home- or being carried- and she took her place at the back, never pushing or shoving. One drunken woman in an elaborate red gown stumbled into her, mumbling apologies, and Hanna supported her with one gloved hand while the other gripped the glass. 

The woman in the red gown was already falling asleep when Hanna deposited her in the cushioned armchair in front of the reception desk. An older woman with graying hair stood behind the desk, looking both extremely professional and immensely weary, and Hanna returned her wan smile. Then she was off again, walking steadily down the hall, not too fast. Never too fast. A proper servant never hurried.

And Hanna Bremer was always a proper servant.


	2. Chapter 2

Hanna had fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but she woke at three in the morning, hearing the floorboards of her apartment creak. Her hand went to the knife lying on the table beside her bed, and she threw off the blankets and rose to her feet.

A quick inspection revealed that no one was hiding in her tiny closet or behind the door of her bedroom. The street outside her window was entirely deserted. Hanna put her ear to the door, listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and she heard nothing. The world around her was silent and dark and asleep, and if she had any sense she would go back to bed.

At four in the morning, she finally gave up and brewed a cup of coffee. The black sludge tasted as awful as it looked, but it would get her through the day. Hanna had a double shift at Akulov’s Fine Dining, and the day after the Emperor’s Birthday was always busy. Mister Akulov would need her to be at her best, and she wouldn’t be able to do her job if she was afraid of ghosts.

The glass was at the bottom of the Morava River. There was no evidence linking her to the crime; in fact, there was no crime at all. There had been a perfectly normal celebration at the Prince Xav Hotel, which had ended without anything more dramatic than a handful of drunken brawls and a Service commander passing out in a bucket of maple mead. Not that Hanna Bremer would know anything about that, since she had never been to the Prince Xav. 

As she stood in the dark room, Hanna felt a smile creeping over her face.  _ Two _ . They had believed that they stood above justice. They had believed that they would never have to answer for their crimes. 

They had been wrong.

She would never be able to mark every name off the list. Some had already died at Escobar or during the Pretendership or simply from old age; others stood beyond her reach. The Usurper had survived half a hundred attempts on his life, and he had only grown more careful over time. But his old friends did not have the same protection . 

When she closed her eyes, she could hear Aunt Clara’s voice.  _ General Tobias Vorkramer _ .  _ His soldiers burned Sevres in the first winter of the Civil War, and he made no attempt to stop them. The sentence is death _ .

Her hands had brought justice for Sevres, burning in the snow. For starving farmers and weeping widows. For Grandfather Emil, walking through the woods with Aunt Clara at his side and Father in his arms. 

Whatever happened to her, no one could ever take that away. But Hanna couldn’t let success make her careless. There were more names, and if she was very good and very lucky she might get eight or nine. Galina had claimed twelve before they found her.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and set about becoming Hanna Bremer again. First there was the uniform. Black skirt, white blouse, and shoes polished to mirror brightness. She knew they were perfect- she had spent more than an hour last night making them exactly right- but she still inspected herself in the mirror. Then there was the face. Anyone could wear a servant’s clothes, but Hanna Bremer  _ looked  _ like a servant. She had the polite, obedient, attentive expression of someone who knew her place and kept to it. 

The last step was the hardest. Hanna could be exultant and terrified and eager for her next mission; Hanna Bremer was just a waitress. Her emotions had to be locked away, sealed tight, so that Hanna Bremer could be tired and annoyed by all the drunks, fighting to remain professional through two long shifts. There were no great triumphs or terrors in her simple, uneventful life.

She wanted to stalk around the apartment for the next few hours, reliving last night while flinching at every sound. Hanna Bremer didn’t want that, though, and she was Hanna Bremer right now. So she went into the tiny kitchen and started making breakfast. Normally she just had oatmeal, which was cheap and simple, but today she felt like having pancakes for some reason.

Her colleagues would want to know what she had done last night. Well, she was embarrassed to admit it, but she really couldn’t hold her liquor. Hanna Bremer had wandered back in a drunken haze late last night, and she’d woken up this morning with a headache and no memory of where she’d been. Good, proper behavior on the Emperor’s Birthday, and she’d still shown up early for work. 

They would laugh, and Mister Akulov would bring her a pot of real coffee with his own hands, and say that she was a treasure. Hanna was going to be sorry to say goodbye when the time came.

Until then, she had a job to do. Akulov’s opened at six, and Hanna liked being thirty minutes early. She could sweep the floors and polish the silverware and generally show Mister Akulov how reliable she was, which would ensure that she had a good reference when she was forced to quit by an unfortunate family problem she couldn’t talk about.

Hanna Bremer would work all day and fall into bed exhausted. She wouldn’t have time to worry about anything, even if she had something to worry about.

Someone knocked on the door. 

Two quick steps took her to the knife. They knocked again as she snatched the blade off the kitchen counter. It had been Galina’s first lesson, long ago, and Hanna remembered. But she had to be sure.

“Hello?,” she said, hearing her voice shake. “Who’s there?”

“A colleague, Hanna Bremer.” The speaker sounded friendly. He had a short, clipped accent she didn’t recognize, and he knew her name. Or at least the name that she used. “I believe that we have a friend in common. She sent me over to discuss a job offer.”

Hanna said, “Prove it. Prove that you’re from our...friend.” Her grip on the knife tightened, and she took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “She would have given you a message.”

Her visitor said, “She will not weep for you. She will not wear mourning. She will not grieve until she has avenged.” He paused, then spoke again. “I hear that last night’s medicine worked wonders. The old man will never be sick again.” 

She unlocked the door and threw it open. The man standing in the opening stepped inside, heedless of her knife, and held out a hand. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Madam Bremer.”

His round, cheerful face wore a broad smile, but Hanna did not return it. After a long moment, he lowered his hand and just stood there, waiting for her to respond. The visitor was half a foot taller than Hanna and thin as a rail, with dark brown eyes peering out at her behind a pair of old-fashioned spectacles. With his cheap black suit and blue tie, he might have been a professor from Osijek Technical College.

“Please come with me,” he said. “We have a great deal to discuss, Madam Bremer, but we can have the conversation in my car.” He glanced around her tiny apartment. “It would be best if you didn’t leave anything that you’ll need later.”

She kept a bag by the door. Clothes, a water bottle, and a box of ration bars. Throwing it over her shoulder, she made her way down the stairs, following two steps behind her visitor. There was only one old woman standing on the landing, smoking a cigarette, and her eyes were half-closed as she blew clouds of smoke into the air. Hanna brushed past her without a word.

If this was a trap, she was walking right into it. If this was a trap, they would have stunned her already, and she would wake up in a concrete cell. There was no need for this kind of game. 

And he’d known the words. Only two people had been in the room when she heard the words, and one of them was dead. 

A groundcar pulled up in front of them, an old blue vehicle with a dent in the left side. Hanna saw a young woman seated behind the driver’s wheel. She had long black hair, blue eyes, and a nervous look on her face, as though she was waiting for something to go wrong. But no one jumped out at them as the visitor opened the car door and they climbed inside. 

She buckled her seatbelt as they accelerated out of the parking lot, keeping an eye on the other two people in the car. The woman- the girl, really- was focused on the road, driving at exactly the speed limit and signaling each time she changed lanes. If she was trying to behave normally, she was doing a terrible job; no one in Osijek actually obeyed the traffic laws. The man was watching her steadily, though Hanna couldn’t see any sign of a weapon. 

Early in the morning after the Emperor’s Birthday, there was next to no traffic on the roads. The engine hummed quietly in the background as they passed Akulov’s Fine Dining. Hanna was going to be late for the first time, and Mister Akulov was not patient with excuses.

All of this was wrong. She needed to be at work, maintaining her cover, not sitting in a car with two strangers. Hanna hadn’t seen another member of the organization since Galina, and that was as it should be. Isolation was what kept them safe. 

The man said, “You have questions. I’ll be happy to answer what I can. But first, introductions.” He smiled warmly at her. “My name is Robert Denis Collins. I am an...associate of our friend, and I am here with her blessing.”

“My name is Sarah Eleanor Meyer,” the girl said. “I’m honored to work with you, Madam Bremer.” Her voice was soft and musical. “You struck a blow against tyranny last night. The death of the butcher Kra…”

“Sarah,” Collins said reprovingly, and she closed her mouth. “It’s  _ Vorkramer _ . You can’t get in the habit of leaving it out, even among us.” 

Hanna said, “You’re League.” Collins nodded politely, as if they were discussing a soccer team instead of a terrorist movement. “Our friend is working with the People’s Defense League.”

Sarah was wearing trousers and a shirt with the logo of the Osijek Bears emblazoned across it. She gave Hanna a small smile, and Hanna thought that she had never met anyone who looked less like a terrorist. Except possibly herself.

She shouldn’t have been surprised to find that her boss had made a bargain with prole terrorists; the Countess had always made use of every weapon she could find. If the Cetagandans could make the Usurper bleed, she would have allied with the Invaders. 

Collins said, “The poison came from us. A small gift to your organization, and a demonstration of what we can accomplish when we work together.” 

She had many questions, but Hanna knew that they wouldn’t be answered.  _ What you don’t know, ImpSec can’t tear out of you _ . So she settled for the one thing they might give her. “What is my part in all of this?” 

“You have rather unique skills,” Collins told her. “Skills that we couldn’t find easily.” She frowned in confusion. “Spy” and “murderer” shouldn’t be uncommon talents among a band of terrorists. “Our friend informs me that you are trained as a lady’s maid.” 

“Yes,” Hanna replied, trying to hide her confusion. It had been a useful cover for about a year, while she completed her training with Galina. “That’s right, Mister Collins.”

Collins said, “You can call me Robert, if you like.” He had a trustworthy face, which made Hanna more suspicious. “We have a lady who is in need of your services. If you’re interested, you can start today.”

“You want me to spy on a lady?,” Hanna asked. She had thought of the League as straightforward terrorists, but she didn’t know much about them. Maybe some cells were more interesting in gathering intelligence than making corpses. 

“We were honest in our introductions,” Collins told her. “But there were some things that we left out. Sarah, could you explain?” 

The girl hesitated before she spoke. “My name is Sarah Meyer,” she said. “But when I was born, my parents named me Sarah  _ Vormeyer _ . I changed my name when I chose to dedicate myself to the Cause of the Revolution.” 

She was in no position to judge the child for her life choices. She had taken her own oath when she was thirteen years old, and Sarah had to be in her early twenties. But she preferred not to trust her life to a stranger’s acting ability, especially a young girl who probably had more enthusiasm than sense. 

Hanna said, “What’s the mission?” She trusted the Countess. The old woman would spend Hanna’s life like a coin at the market, but only if she found the right deal. If they had convinced her to give up one of her last knives, they must have made a persuasive argument. 

Collins smiled warmly at her. “There are certain people who stand in the way of the Revolution,” he said. “And I understand that you have debts that must be paid. It’s simply a matter of killing two birds with one stone.” 

So she wasn’t going to get any answers out of him. That...wasn’t a bad thing. Hanna didn’t want to go in blind, she didn’t want to trust strangers, but if she did have to work with people outside the organization, it was good to know that they were careful. Their business was not forgiving to people who talked too much. 

“Where?,” Hanna said. “I need a location.” Careful or not, she wasn’t going in  _ completely  _ blind. She needed to know what kind of opposition they would be up against. 

Collins said, “You’re going to a wonderful place, the kind of event that every little girl dreams of.” He leaned in closer, and his smile sharpened into a grin. “You’re going to a ball.” 


End file.
